“A Farewell to Arms”: The Symbolism of Rain
Trevor Owen
History 435-72
Professor Ken Rose
February 17, 2011
The novels of Ernest Hemingway tell the stories of a variety of heroes and heroines.
However, one constant element that is a part of all the novels is nature. Even though the
stories may take place in different settings, in all of them, the environment plays a major
role in the structure and plot of the story. The environment, essentially, is a separate and
crucial character to each and every Hemingway tale. This concept can be illustrated in
“The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Sun Also Rises,” “The Old Man and Sea,” and of
course, in “A Farewell to Arms.” In “A Farewell to Arms,” Ernest Hemingway attempts
to tell the unvarnished truth about war; to present an honest, rather than a heroic, account
of combat, retreat, and the ways in which soldiers fill their time when they are not
fighting. One of the ways Hemingway attempts to accomplish this goal is through the
symbolism of the character or element of nature; specifically, that of rain. For instance,
weather is to this day a fundamental component of the war experience. While
The Essay on Hemingway Farewell To Arms
... of Hemingway's stories. He used his personal experiences as their basis but enhanced them greatly. In 1929 Hemingway published A Farewell to Arms; the ... the Bell tolls is Hemingway's greatest work. For Whom The Bell Tolls and A Farewell To Arms changed the way modern ... literature is written, "as Hemingway proved that simple, yet beautiful ...
Hemingway depicts weather realistically in the plot of the story, he also uses it, as in the
case of rain, to convey death and destruction.
From the beginning of the story until the very end, rain serves as a powerful symbol of
death and all the accompanying emotions of grief, pain and despair. As the rain pours
down on a beautiful day, it turns all that is joyful and hopeful into desolation. From the
very first pages of the novel this is seen when Hemingway describes the rapid
progression of the seasons saying, “In the fall when the rains came the leaves all fell from
the chestnut trees and the branches were bare and the trunks black with rain (p. 4).” The
main character Henry reinforces this by telling us, “The vineyards were thin and bare-
branched too and all the country wet and brown and dead with autumn (p. 4).” As was
alluded to previously, the reason Hemingway floods his novel from beginning to end, is
to remind the reader how similar war and the symbolic representation of rain are. They
are elements that appear to be ever present in our lives and completely beyond the control
of mankind. For the “lost generation,” war had become like the environment; something
much larger than themselves that appeared beyond understanding and a sense of
meaning. Early in the novel we also see that rain is not only a reflection of death but an
omen to it: “At the start of the winter came the permanent rain and with the came the
cholera. But it was checked and in the end only seven thousand died of it in the army
(p.4).” Therefore, in “A Farewell to Arms,” before we learn about the lives of the
characters, we are informed about the world they live in; it is an environment of pouring
rains or continual death and destruction.
This symbolic element though is not just a part of the world they live in, but
throughout the story, it continually invades and assaults their lives. Clearly, Hemingway
was trying to not only covey the manner in which World War I had defined his
generation but forever left it scared as well. Although the impact of war may be felt by
The Essay on Emotional Suffering Henry War Catherine
SUFFERING Through many works of literature, authors tend to show many different tragedies when a person suffers in his / her life. In his novel A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway shows these tragedies through the relationship between Fredrick Henry and Catherine Barkley. Hemingway portrayed these types of sufferings in ways that the reader feels the characters pain. A person during the rough ...
all, it is seldom equally understood. The characters of Catherine and Henry represent two
such different understandings that, eventually, merge as one through a tragic love story.
Henry being the naïve and innocent soldier cared for by the injured and experienced
nurse Catherine. We see during their Milan idyll, Catherine makes the symbolism of rain
very explicit for both reader and Henry when she says, “I’m afraid of the rain because
sometimes I see myself dead in it. And sometimes I see you dead in it (p.126).” This
omen lo and behold rings true. During Henry and Catherine’s trip from the armory to the
hotel near the train station on his last night with her, the fog that has covered the city
from the start of the chapter turns to rain. The rain continues as they bid one another
farewell; in fact, Catherine’s last act in this part of the novel is to signal to Henry that he
should step out of the rain. Back at the front we are reminded, “…the trees were all bare
and the roads were muddy (p.163).”
While we see the rain invade the personal relationship between Henry and Catherine,
we also see that it is a continual part of daily life. It rains almost continuously during the
chapter when the tide of the battle turns and the Italians begin their retreat from Caporetto
and from the Germans who have joined the fighting. This is no doubt a clear omen from
Hemingway to the reader that greater death and destruction is to follow. On another
occasion, the rain turns to snow one evening, holding out the hope that the offensive will
cease, but the snow quickly melts and the rain resumes. Even during a discussion among
the drivers regarding the wine they are drinking with dinner, a driver named Aymo says,
“To-morrow maybe we drink rainwater (p.191).” By this time Hemingway has
developed the rain symbolism to such a degree that it represents a genuine sense of
foreboding; and indeed, the following day brigs death to Henry’s disintegrating unit. As
Hemingway continues to flood the novel with rain, one can help but to recognize the
similar manner in which war too pours down upon us physically, emotionally, and
The Essay on Henry Catherine Hospital War
The novel opens with a description of artillery-laden troops marching slowly through the rains of late summer and autumn. One of these men is the American Frederic Henry, an ambulance driver. Henry is currently in the Italian army, at the Italian front during World War I. The main action of these first few chapters begins when Henry returns from winter leave in early spring. His roommate, Rinaldi, ...
spiritually.
The characters of the novel though are not merely twigs floating down a stream.
Some of them do take active roles against the forces of the natural elements affecting
their lives. Henry is a prime example of a character that grows from a mere passive
viewer of the rain and war to an individual who actively engages these forces in order to
take control of his life. In this character development, Hemingway seems to be
reminding the reader that although one’s control of the environment may be beyond
them, actively participating in it is not. We see that as both Henry and his relationship
with Catherine grow and change, their onslaught by the elements does not. It is raining
while the fugitive Henry rides the train to Stressa, raining when he arrives, and raining
while Henry and Catherine spend the night together in his hotel room. The open-boat trip
across Lake Maggiore also takes place in the rain, with an umbrella used as a sail. And
additionally in Chapter XL, as Henry and Catherine are bidding farewell to their
wintertime mountain retreat for the city in which Catherine’s baby is to be born, Henry
tells us that “In the night it started raining (p.308).”
As the novel begins so does it end; littered with endless symbolic references to rain.
Another clear reference by Hemingway with regards to how war affects our lives from
start to finish. In the final pages of the novel when Henry leaves the hospital for lunch
during Catherine’s protracted and agonizing delivery he notes, “The day was cloudy but
the sun was trying to come through (p. 320).” During the operation, however, he looks
out the window and sees it is raining. And then just after the nurse has told him that the
baby is dead, Henry looks outside again and “…could see nothing but the dark and the
rain falling across the light from the window (p.322).” And finally, at the novel’s end,
Hemingway concludes his tragic story of love and war by simply saying, “After a while I
went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”
From beginning to end, not only are the characters in “A Farewell to Arms”
The Essay on “Cat in the rain” by Ernest Hemingway
The Analysis of the short story “Cat in the rain” by Ernest Hemingway. The discourse under analysis is a short story titled “Cat in the rain”. It is written by Ernest Hemingway, an American author and journalist. The story is about an American couple that is staying in a hotel in Italy. The wife wants to get a cat that she saw under the rain, while her husband doesn’t seem to care much about her. ...
surrounded by rain, Hemingway’s symbolic representation of death and destruction, but
they also seem unable to escape it. Like the story of Henry and Catherine, war impacts
individuals of all types and in a myriad of ways. For the people involved in World War I,
they were so impacted by the death ad destruction, that they later became know as the
“Lost Generation.” Unfortunately, for all, “It was not the War to end all wars.” Just as a
“Farewell to Arms” illustrates, although we may change and grow, the rain will always
continue to fall upon us and flood our lives. And although this symbolic representation
of rain in the novel may appear unnecessarily obvious, it does serve its purpose. The
literary device not only drives Hemingway’s plot and maintains our interest, as we hold
our breaths every time it rains, but it continually reminds us about what lies at the story’s
heart. “A Farewell to Arms,” essentially, is a brutally realistic saga of life during
wartime. Through the novel’s prose we are not only thrown into this reality by
Hemingway but allowed to also experience the love and loss of a generation .